60. The Commission, in several of its rulings, has referred to circumstances in which both the general conditions of an electoral process and the aspects linked to its organization and implementation lead to undue advantages for participants and can undermine the equity of the electoral contest. 61. Thus, the Commission has referred to circumstances that include the fear or persecution of opposition leaders, the absence of an electoral registry or the registration of a very low number of voters, the declaration of a state of emergency during the elections or very close to the holding of the elections, practical disadvantages in the access of opposition sectors to media or direct or indirect control of the media, and the use of public resources to favor a candidacy. 48 62. The Commission has referred to the adverse impact stemming from the dominance of a political party at the helm of government when its leaders interfere decisively in operating the mechanisms for selecting candidates to hold elected office or when, in general, the organization in charge of conducting elections does not provide guarantees of impartiality of the bodies in charge of implementing the actions required to hold an election. In this context, the Commission has also ruled about how a government might use resources enabling it to transmit messages for its benefit and to constrain the possibility of opponents to transmit their own messages. In addition, the Commission has referred to the mandatory participation of government employees in marches, as well as acts of violence, against the opposition and to intimidate voters. The Commission has also taken into account those aspects related to establishing polling stations, the electoral court and its powers, as well as the availability of voting ballots that are understandable and devoid of bias swaying the voter. 49 63. In one case, the IACHR also examined the legal status of senators-for-life and appointed senators that was in force in Chile, in the light of the principles of representative democracy, and highlighted the following: 65. (…) [I]n the case of the senators with life tenure, while this institution has been incorporated in some member states (see, for example, Article 148 of the Venezuelan Constitution and Article 189 of the Paraguayan Constitution), in Chile, the institution of having senate posts with life tenure was imposed by a de facto regime, which was tantamount to self-designation of the head-of-state of Chile at the time, General Augusto Pinochet. In effect, while all the other countries of the Americas that have this institution provide that the position can only be occupied by former presidents who have been democratically elected―with which one could accept that there is an indirect sort of popular legitimation―in Chile it has been applied to give a Senate seat to a former head-of-state not elected by fair, free, secret and universal suffrage, in accordance with universally accepted standards. In this sense, it is contradictory that the first democratically elected president in Chile under the 1980 Constitution, Patricio Aylwin, was not able to join the Senate as a senator-for-life, since he did not fall within the Constitutional requirement of having exercised power for six continuous years, while General Augusto Pinochet, who was headof-state during a de facto regime without any popular election, was made a senator-for-life under this provision. 66. This situation, which, moreover, is foreign to Chile's democratic constitutional tradition, cannot be legitimated by the argument that the institution of designated senators or senators-for-life was approved by the majority of the Chilean people in the plebiscite approving the 1980 Constitution, for, apart from what was noted above on the lack of guarantees in that election―the majority cannot diminish or eliminate a right as fundamental as the opportunity to effectively elect their representatives to the legislative branch. There is a limit on the limitations that majorities can place on those rights of minorities that are protected by human rights. Otherwise, the majorities would seriously endanger the rights of the minorities, in open defiance of the democratic rule of law. In this respect, the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which it declared the unconstitutionality of a referendum in the state of Colorado, in which the voters had approved a federal plan, instead of the rule of “one person one vote” is very enlightening. That court ratified the principle according to which: “An individual's constitutionally protected right to cast an equally weighted vote cannot be denied even by a vote of a majority of a State's electorate.” 67. In the instant case, as petitioners have argued, the institution of designated senators compromises the very legitimacy of the rule of law, on taking from the sovereign people the ability to elect a significant number (20.83% 48 IACHR, Resolution No. 01/90, Cases 9768, 9780, and 9820 (Mexico), September 29, 1990. Likewise, Annual Report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 1990-1991, III. Human rights, political rights, and representative democracy in the inter-American system, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.79.rev.1 Doc. 12, February 22, 1991. 49 IACHR, Resolution No. 01/90, Cases 9768, 9780 and 9820 (Mexico), September 29, 1990. Likewise, Annual Report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 1990-1991, III. Human rights, political rights, and representative democracy in the inter-American system, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.79.rev.1 Doc. 12, February 22, 1991.